


Rosie and the Rainbows

by MissDavis



Series: Consolation Prizes [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Girl Guides/Girl Scouts, M/M, Parentlock, Rated M for explicit language, Sherlock is a good dad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2019-04-24 12:29:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14355549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissDavis/pseuds/MissDavis
Summary: Sherlock isn't exactly opposed to Rosie joining the Girl Guides, but he doesn't really see the appeal, either. It ends up being much worse than he imagined.





	Rosie and the Rainbows

**Author's Note:**

> My final ficlet (a few days late) for the [ 221b-Consolation Fest](https://221b-consolation.tumblr.com/). Based on this anonymous prompt: _Oh! I know! I dare you to follow through on that thing you said about Sally as a Girl Guide leader._
> 
> Please note that while I have way too much Girl Scout leader experience, I am American and know nothing about Girl Guiding in the UK. :) Except now I know that Daisies are called Rainbows.

Normally Sherlock didn't mind picking Rosie up after school. She was usually done at 3:30, well before John's shift at the surgery ended, so Sherlock would meet her and they would walk home together, often stopping for a treat from Speedy's on the way. Today, however, she'd had her first meeting of her Girl Guides unit after school. It threw Sherlock's entire schedule off, and meant they wouldn't have time to share a pastry without spoiling her dinner. To top it off, even though all the girls in her unit attended the same school, they weren't meeting there. They were meeting at a church. A church, even though when Sherlock had agreed to be Rosie's godfather all those years ago, John had promised him he wouldn't need to set foot in a church with her again at least until she got married. And here he was, not even seven years later, having to set foot in a church. Well, a church basement, at least, and John assured him the Guides were not affiliated with any religion but were just using the meeting space because it was available.

Sherlock suspected that Rosie's decision to become a Guide had more to do with wanting to please John than with any desire to do...whatever it was that Girl Guides did. Hiking or singing songs or dressing up in matching uniforms to march in a parade. Sherlock had no idea—why would he? He'd certainly never participated in any similar organized activities as a child. John, however, had apparently been a Boy Scout. Of course he had. He'd followed the pipeline shunting him directly from Scouts into the Army, no doubt. Not that Sherlock didn't appreciate certain aspects of John's military background, but Rosie certainly didn't need to follow that pathway herself.

He arrived just as the meeting was letting out, sidestepping around a half-dozen girls and their mums, all the children babbling about how wonderful their new leader was and how much fun they'd just had. Sherlock scoffed; how difficult could it be to entertain a bunch of five and six year old girls? All one needed to do was put some glitter and glue on a table and promise them chocolate milk if they finished on schedule. 

Rosie met him just outside the room where she'd had the meeting. "Daddy forgot to fill in my form all the way," she told him. "You have to go sign it now. I need to go give Chloe the flower she made, she left it on the table." She shoved one of the two pipe cleaner creations she was holding at him—it could've been a flower, he supposed—and ran off down the hallway before he could stop her. 

He stepped into the room, beneath a banner emblazoned with the words "Welcome Rainbows." Rainbows—why were the youngest members of Guides called Rainbows? Were they the byproduct of bad weather? It made no sense. He glanced toward the front of the room, to where a woman was packing a tote bag with a variety of craft supplies, aided by a curly-haired young girl wearing a red and white polo shirt with the Rainbows logo across the front. Not much of a uniform, in his opinion.

"Excuse me, I—" He stopped dead as the woman turned around. Her hair was shorter, and a few shades lighter than it had been the last time he'd seen her—she'd started dying it when she began to go gray, obviously. After her daughter was born. He remembered Lestrade mentioning something about her being on leave a few years ago, but for the most part, Sherlock had spent the last half-decade doing his best to avoid even thinking about Sally Donovan.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me." Sally dropped the bottle of glue she was holding into the bag. Her gaze cut from Sherlock to the girl standing next to her. "Lucy, go out in the hall and stay with Lily and her mum until I come get you, all right?" 

"Yes, Mummy." The girl picked up a rather poorly-made pipe cleaner flower from the table and skipped past Sherlock and out the door. She was the same height as Rosie but looked a bit younger. She'd be a year behind her in school, if Sherlock recalled correctly. But he'd never suspected that they would end up at the same school, much less in the same extracurricular activities.

He pushed the door to the room shut and took a few steps closer to Sally, taking in her appearance: her blouse and trousers were both fairly new and of decent quality, but her shoes really told the whole story. He sniffed. 

"How can you possibly afford to send your daughter to the same school as—" he began, but she cut him off with, "Who died and left you in charge of a child?" 

He tipped his head and blinked once before answering, "Mary Watson, obviously." 

Sally's shoulders slumped and she took a step backward. She looked down at a neat stack of papers piled on the table next to her tote bag. "I saw the name, but I thought it must be a different John Watson." She picked up the papers and began to flip through them. "I should've checked the address. He's back at Baker Street with you, of course." 

"Of course." 

Sally pulled one form from the pile and frowned at it. "What are we going to do?"

"Do? I'm going to sign that form in your hand and you're going to lead Rosie and the other girls through a variety of wholesome and educational activities until they all outgrow the desire to be Girl Guides, probably by Year Four."

"Is that what you want?"

"No, but I don't know of any other local Rainbow units and John really wants Rosie to do this for some reason."

She crossed her arms and stared at him; he found her gaze uncomfortably analytical and he had to stop himself from pulling his coat tighter as a defense mechanism.

"How long did John wait after Mary died before he finally started fucking you?" 

Sherlock's jaw dropped. "Sorry, what?"

Sally shook her head. "No, I'm sorry. Old habits die hard, I guess." She sighed. "We need to be professional with each other now, if our kids are going to be Rainbows together. Sorry."

Sherlock pursed his lips, then nodded. "But why does everyone always assume that I'm the one who's being fucked?" 

She stared at him for a moment, until they both began to laugh. He walked the rest of the distance across the room to her and took the form that he needed to sign.

"How did we both end up as middle-aged parents, Sherlock?" 

"Speak for yourself. I'm not middle-aged." 

"You're older than I am." 

"Rosie keeps me young," he said. "Now if that's all you need from me, I'll be happy to collect her and leave."

"Actually." She pulled out another blank form from a folder in her bag. "I know I'll regret asking this, but have you ever given any thought to being a co-leader for the Girl Guides?"

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this ficlet series, you may want to [check out some of my other work](https://archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=%E2%9C%93&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=revised_at&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=-consolation&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=0&commit=Sort+and+Filter&user_id=MissDavis). Thank you for reading!


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